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Thursday, November 26, 2009
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Miscellany
7 November
I have a load of miscellaneous pictures I might as well post.
The first three are of the lake at Thompson Park in Jamesburg, around 7:30 a.m. on October 4, approximately twelve hours after we landed back in the U.S. and approximately five minutes before we started the Pumpkin Patch Pedal century:
A duck, hidden by the tree, is making the wake:
If I were to have had jet lag the way most people do I'd just have been tired. But no, I have to be different. I get nauseated instead. So I pedaled from mile 44 to mile 80 feeling as if I were about to hurl. This wasn't at all helped by the dead guy around mile 35. He'd just collapsed off his bike and was lying in the road when we got there. 911 had already been called, a nurse cyclist was about to go to work on him, and there were about twenty people milling about already, so we moved out of the way. We found out later that they never got a pulse on the guy after twenty minutes of CPR and three rounds of defibrillator shocks. So bitching about a bit of queasiness was a little out of order. Big Joe, Little Joe, and Mighty Mike decided to pull me back after the last rest stop at mile 80, but by then I was feeling better.
On October 11 I snapped this one on Hoffman's Crossing Road near Califon, NJ. For more about that ride, read Tom's blog entry.
When we got to Califon I took a picture of the (groan) Raritan River:
Burnaby (left) and Cleio (who will be 20.5 years old in nine days) enloafed on a sofa:
How about a sunset from the train as we were pulling into Trenton on October 22? A storm front was moving in.
About half an hour later I was picking up my share of veggies from the Cherry Grove Farm CSA. The sunset was working well with the clouds, and the moon was out.
Fall colors in Burlington County on October 25:
Smithville Lake, on the same ride:
On the train ride from Trenton to Philly we pass a landfill just outside of Levittown, PA. Someday I want to get there at sunrise and photograph the trucks in silhouette on top of the landfill, but for now a few shots as the train whizzes by will have to do. The first of these three is a complete blur but I sort of like it anyway.
Today we rode to Lambertville. On Gulick Road we saw lots of cows.
Wow. We're now officially caught up.
I might have to take a short break from blogging so I can finish the Sierra Club work I'm supposed to be doing and get jewelry made, photographed, and online before Black Friday. Yeah, right.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Europe 2009 Part 5: Venice
25 September - 1 October
"Venice used to be the center of the world. Now it's like Disneyland," Mighty Mike said after I got back. I'd seen a few pictures but I really didn't know what to expect. That most of the passengers on the train were speaking English with American accents was the first indication that this part of the trip was going to be a little different.
We bought 36-hour tickets for the vaporetto. Picture bus-sized ferries that buzz about the Grand Canal like flies, stopping every couple of minutes first on one side of the canal then the other, making their way down one side of the island or the other, or over to Murano or the Lido. Taking a vaporetto is the cheapest way to get around in Venice, and cheap is a good thing because everything else -- everything -- is outrageously expensive.
Our hotel was a few minutes' walk from a vaporetto stop. From the moment we stepped on land we were surrounded by glass. Even the light fixture in our hotel room was hand-blown glass.
The hotel clerk gave us directions to a few places and instructions on how to get to Murano, where all the glassblowing workshops are. "All you need in Venice is a good pair of shoes." There are no cars, no bikes, and no motorcycles because everywhere are stairways over little canal channels.
After finding lunch around the corner we looked into the shops on our way back to the hotel. I was looking for Venetian beads, of course, but I wasn't going to buy anything until after seeing Murano.
I taught the hotel clerk, who was multilingual already, a new phrase in English: "I'm like a pig in shit." She said she might not be able to use that one.
We took the vaporetto to Murano. First we went into the Glass Museum to learn some history of glass here and around the world.
Then we wandered into some workshops. One had a quick demonstration of glass-blowing, but it wasn't anything I hadn't seen before. It was basic and touristy, but that's what we expected.
The workshop stores were something else. Multi-storied and packed to the gills with glass, each had its own take on what clearly was a formula for tourist dollars. On the ground floor would be the cheaper stuff: the rearing horses, tiny figurines, vases, and pendant jewelry. Upstairs would be the chandeliers, tall light fixtures, giant vases, and large sculptures of various animals. Escaping the eyes of clerks wasn't easy. They'd follow us around. It was difficult to tell if this was to prevent us from smashing the inventory, stealing it, or walking out without a sale.
I'd made a rule: no more "stuff" in the house. No more useless things, no matter how pretty. The bead room is full, the rest of the house full of books, dust, and other small works of art made by friends or bought before the new rule went into effect. Besides, our house faces north and is surrounded by trees. A colorful vase would dull in a window, get lost among the clutter on the coffee table, be demolished by a rampaging cat.
If I were to buy something made in Murano it would have to have some practical use. I could put a glass clock in the bead room. A small vase I could use during the summer when I bring home flowers from the farm, but the small vases were still too expensive and not nearly as intriguing as the bigger ones. So in a smaller workshop store I evaded the clerk long enough to snap a few pictures; this way I could look at all the glass for as long as I wanted to without taking up any space but that on the hard drive.
OK, the vase I really like is on the bottom right, in the corner. I picked that one up and almost started to rationalize spending nearly $150 on it. But I didn't. I took the picture instead:
This chandelier is just too cool:
Over-the-top:
I did find some beads, though, in a tiny store near a vaporetto stop. The clerk saw me contemplating a necklace. I was trying to figure out what the per-bead cost would be if I took it home and took it apart. I asked if she spoke English and then if she had individual beads for sale. She did. She kept them in an organizer by the register, where she strung necklaces to sell to the tourists. At 4.50 Euros each these beads were still expensive, but they were bigger than most I'd seen so far. After looking in a dozen stores since landing in Venice, I decided to take what I could get.
Then we waited for the vaporetto as the sun started to set. Not once during our Venice trip did we see blue sky. It was always hazy and humid, like a Philly summer day, only not quite as hot.
Around the corner from our hotel was the creepiest store I'd seen since that chandelier supply place in Richmond. I had to take some photos with my cell phone and send them off to Dale right away.
Masquerade balls used to be a big deal in Venice, so the masks I can understand. But the rest of it...
Sticking to the European style of eating dinner at 8 p.m. or later, we found a restaurant that seemed almost affordable. When we walked in at 8:40 the waiter looked disdainfully at his watch. We were, apparently, scuttling their plans to close shop by 9 and go home. But the food was good. I had what I'd been eating since Turin: pasta alla pomodoro. Jack got pasta with octopus cooked in squid ink. It stank. And turned his mouth black. He tried to sop it off his tongue with bread.
We thought we'd look at the public garden the next day. Venice isn't very big so we could walk anywhere in a reasonable amount of time. I had to stop in every glass store, though, in search of beads. I found a few here and there from shopkeepers who were stringing necklaces. One guy kept his supply in shoe boxes in a cabinet. Another woman had a large bowl full of singles and rejects that the two of us pawed through for half an hour (poor Jack). Slowly I was accumulating some good Venetian beads, but the search was intensely frustrating. Anything good would be on a necklace, one or two beads at most, strung amid crap, and selling for 75 Euros (about $125).
Here is some more unobtainable Murano glass beauty:
Forget what I said about that little vase on Murano. I want this one:
Oh, hell, if I'm going to get one I might as well get them both.
Anyway, the trip to the garden. Here's a view across the canal to a church:
This is the Via Garabaldi, where our literary friends Kevin and Brycchan fantasized about living. They call themselves members of the Via Garabaldi Wishful Thinking Society. They wanted me to get a picture of Jack under the street sign so he cold join the club.
They liked the neighborhood because it looked to them like real people lived there. The apartments above street level didn't look to be in very good condition.
I have no pictures of the garden because we couldn't get in. There was a citywide art exhibition going on, and much of it was in the park. As a result a normally free park now cost something to enter.
So we went back to Murano instead, where a clerk from the day before recognized us on the street, pulled us back into his store (we were trying to be polite) and trailed us again as I tried to wriggle free. The visit cost me 20 Euro for a glass clock, but I like it, and it's prettier than anything I'd seen or would see on Venice. (It lives on my beading table now so that I can keep track of the time when I get heavy into a project and leave Jack waiting for lights-out for an hour past bedtime.)
We took the vaporetto to a different part of Venice, to see the Ghetto, where people had built dwellings so compact they'd sometimes take up half the height of a normal apartment, stacked on top of each other, a model for tenaments worldwide that came to be known as ghettos (small "g") themselves.
On our way in a friendly little black cat played with us. Jack found a piece of plastic ribbon and I got out my camera.
After we walked away the kitty posed in a doorway for us.
A glass shop in the Ghetto specialized in Judaica. In the window was a blown glass chess set:
As we waited for a vaporetto to take us back to Saint Mark's square (our hotel was nearby), the sun was setting:
The boat took us past the Rialto Bridge, one of only a few that cross the Grand Canal.
At night (well past 8 again) as we waited for a table at a restaurant, I took some pictures of a feeder canal.
In reality it was much darker out than this, but the camera decided to make some corrections. The result is an eerie doorway glow and a haunting plaster face on the left side wall.
My throat felt scratchy at dinner. I thought it might be allergies but it didn't get any better. By the next morning I knew I was sick.
We went to Saint Mark's Square, which looked like it had just finished draining from a high tide. The line for the cathedral was huge. We went next door to the Doge's Palace instead. The square has a handful of museums, and you can spend a healthy sum to buy an all-encompassing ticket. Jack thought it over and we decided it wasn't worth it. We bought cheaper ones that let us into a few places but not Saint Mark's. Oh well. We went into the palace, the library museum, and the Correr museum instead. More Medieval art, Madonnas, and baby Jesuses, plus some manuscripts from the Venetian architect Palladio. My nose was running and I was pretty sure I had a small fever. This was going to put a dent in my plan to ride a century two days from now.
We got across the canal by bridge to the Peggy Guggenheim museum, full of modern art. Finally, pictures that made no sense at all. For a while we sat outside at the front of the museum, on the Grand Canal, watching boats and gondolas go by. There was a multi-man-powered gondola race, too, with a dozen colored boats and men screaming as they sped past.
Then we started thinking about the Buskin and Batteau song, "Death in Venice." We could only remember some of the words. But, lucky for you, because neither the lyrics nor the song are online, we have an old LP (gasp!) with printed lyrics.
Some words of warning first, though: It helps if you've read Death in Venice, but it's not necessary; and there are some really bad puns in here.
Poor Gus, never saw the Eiffel Tower
Poor Gus, never saw the London Bridge
Poor Gus, cut down in his finest flower
Getting stiffer by the hour
Stuffed inside the hotel fridge
'Cause
Death in Venice
He just ran out of breath in Venice
And now they're gonna pole
An old gondola draped in black
He came to Venice wan and sickly
But who could tell that he'd pass in Itly
The natives thought it was grotesque, oh,
An al fresco cardiac
When Sal and Guido
Dragged him off across the Lido
He was dead meat, oh
No treat, oh
Nohow
He'd been a great musician
Who finally learned decomposition
No need to requisition
A physician
Not now
Deceased in Venice
Not even time to call a priest in Venice
That's some vacation, he just coughed
And shuffled off without a prayer
His escapade erratic
Raised eyebrows up and and down the Adriatic
And if he weren't null and void
He'd have destroyed his welcome there
His secret passion
Was un poco out of fashion
He had a lot of weird irrational
Trash on his mind
The boy was under twenty
Young and pretty, and al dente
A boy with plenty
To drive a Venetian blind
(Drive a Venetian blind?
Sure. He was too young to rent a car.)
So death in Venice
And now they're cleaning up the meth in Venith
They've even called in Al from Parma
The embalmer
And a pal
And if anyone can make him look
Decent for burial
It's Al
Al can make him look sensational
Al can make him look terriffic
Al can make him come out Grand
Can Al
(Music by David Buskin; Words by David Buskin and Abra Bigham; copyright 1984, Poso Music)
We wandered back across the bridge to yet another museum, where we saw a modern glass exhibit. There was some interesting work; the dead pigeons caught my attention. But I wasn't the only one fixated on the chandeliers that hung above the exhibit, not part of it, but better.
For Chris in Boston, here's some neon art:
In a fevery snot-daze I shuffled back to the hotel, but I wanted to stop first in a store we'd passed earlier in the day. Everything in it was fifty percent off; I might have a shot at snagging some cheaper beads in a necklace. The place was mobbed with tourists. I had plenty of time to finger a dozen necklaces and choose the best ones for destruction while I was standing in line. Then the credit card connection broke and all sales became cash-only. I had to put back half of what I was holding, but I'm glad I did. And for the 45 minutes I was in there scrutinizing necklaces I completely forgot about my fever. I came away with some reasonably good stuff at less than one Euro per bead.
We went back to the hotel, picked up our bags, took a vaporetto to the train station, and boarded a bus for the airport. As we neared the airport, about twenty minutes into the ride, Jack saw our hotel, so we jumped off the bus and dragged our bags half a mile back to the hotel. That saved us some cab fare since we were low on cash anyway.
Our flight was for 7 a.m. the next morning, which meant getting to the airport by 5:30. Jack was figuring we'd just have to deal with not getting enough sleep, but I was conked out by 9:30. I awoke in the wee hours with an excruciating headache. I stumbled into the bathroom, found my naproxen, downed it, and fell back into bed. Within minutes the headache was gone. I felt the fever break. When we got up a few hours later I felt fine. We boarded the plane for London.
"Venice used to be the center of the world. Now it's like Disneyland," Mighty Mike said after I got back. I'd seen a few pictures but I really didn't know what to expect. That most of the passengers on the train were speaking English with American accents was the first indication that this part of the trip was going to be a little different.
We bought 36-hour tickets for the vaporetto. Picture bus-sized ferries that buzz about the Grand Canal like flies, stopping every couple of minutes first on one side of the canal then the other, making their way down one side of the island or the other, or over to Murano or the Lido. Taking a vaporetto is the cheapest way to get around in Venice, and cheap is a good thing because everything else -- everything -- is outrageously expensive.
Our hotel was a few minutes' walk from a vaporetto stop. From the moment we stepped on land we were surrounded by glass. Even the light fixture in our hotel room was hand-blown glass.
The hotel clerk gave us directions to a few places and instructions on how to get to Murano, where all the glassblowing workshops are. "All you need in Venice is a good pair of shoes." There are no cars, no bikes, and no motorcycles because everywhere are stairways over little canal channels.After finding lunch around the corner we looked into the shops on our way back to the hotel. I was looking for Venetian beads, of course, but I wasn't going to buy anything until after seeing Murano.
I taught the hotel clerk, who was multilingual already, a new phrase in English: "I'm like a pig in shit." She said she might not be able to use that one.
We took the vaporetto to Murano. First we went into the Glass Museum to learn some history of glass here and around the world.
Then we wandered into some workshops. One had a quick demonstration of glass-blowing, but it wasn't anything I hadn't seen before. It was basic and touristy, but that's what we expected.
The workshop stores were something else. Multi-storied and packed to the gills with glass, each had its own take on what clearly was a formula for tourist dollars. On the ground floor would be the cheaper stuff: the rearing horses, tiny figurines, vases, and pendant jewelry. Upstairs would be the chandeliers, tall light fixtures, giant vases, and large sculptures of various animals. Escaping the eyes of clerks wasn't easy. They'd follow us around. It was difficult to tell if this was to prevent us from smashing the inventory, stealing it, or walking out without a sale.
I'd made a rule: no more "stuff" in the house. No more useless things, no matter how pretty. The bead room is full, the rest of the house full of books, dust, and other small works of art made by friends or bought before the new rule went into effect. Besides, our house faces north and is surrounded by trees. A colorful vase would dull in a window, get lost among the clutter on the coffee table, be demolished by a rampaging cat.
If I were to buy something made in Murano it would have to have some practical use. I could put a glass clock in the bead room. A small vase I could use during the summer when I bring home flowers from the farm, but the small vases were still too expensive and not nearly as intriguing as the bigger ones. So in a smaller workshop store I evaded the clerk long enough to snap a few pictures; this way I could look at all the glass for as long as I wanted to without taking up any space but that on the hard drive.
OK, the vase I really like is on the bottom right, in the corner. I picked that one up and almost started to rationalize spending nearly $150 on it. But I didn't. I took the picture instead:
This chandelier is just too cool:
Over-the-top:
I did find some beads, though, in a tiny store near a vaporetto stop. The clerk saw me contemplating a necklace. I was trying to figure out what the per-bead cost would be if I took it home and took it apart. I asked if she spoke English and then if she had individual beads for sale. She did. She kept them in an organizer by the register, where she strung necklaces to sell to the tourists. At 4.50 Euros each these beads were still expensive, but they were bigger than most I'd seen so far. After looking in a dozen stores since landing in Venice, I decided to take what I could get.Then we waited for the vaporetto as the sun started to set. Not once during our Venice trip did we see blue sky. It was always hazy and humid, like a Philly summer day, only not quite as hot.
Around the corner from our hotel was the creepiest store I'd seen since that chandelier supply place in Richmond. I had to take some photos with my cell phone and send them off to Dale right away.
Masquerade balls used to be a big deal in Venice, so the masks I can understand. But the rest of it...
Sticking to the European style of eating dinner at 8 p.m. or later, we found a restaurant that seemed almost affordable. When we walked in at 8:40 the waiter looked disdainfully at his watch. We were, apparently, scuttling their plans to close shop by 9 and go home. But the food was good. I had what I'd been eating since Turin: pasta alla pomodoro. Jack got pasta with octopus cooked in squid ink. It stank. And turned his mouth black. He tried to sop it off his tongue with bread.We thought we'd look at the public garden the next day. Venice isn't very big so we could walk anywhere in a reasonable amount of time. I had to stop in every glass store, though, in search of beads. I found a few here and there from shopkeepers who were stringing necklaces. One guy kept his supply in shoe boxes in a cabinet. Another woman had a large bowl full of singles and rejects that the two of us pawed through for half an hour (poor Jack). Slowly I was accumulating some good Venetian beads, but the search was intensely frustrating. Anything good would be on a necklace, one or two beads at most, strung amid crap, and selling for 75 Euros (about $125).
Here is some more unobtainable Murano glass beauty:
Forget what I said about that little vase on Murano. I want this one:
Oh, hell, if I'm going to get one I might as well get them both.Anyway, the trip to the garden. Here's a view across the canal to a church:
This is the Via Garabaldi, where our literary friends Kevin and Brycchan fantasized about living. They call themselves members of the Via Garabaldi Wishful Thinking Society. They wanted me to get a picture of Jack under the street sign so he cold join the club.
They liked the neighborhood because it looked to them like real people lived there. The apartments above street level didn't look to be in very good condition.
I have no pictures of the garden because we couldn't get in. There was a citywide art exhibition going on, and much of it was in the park. As a result a normally free park now cost something to enter.So we went back to Murano instead, where a clerk from the day before recognized us on the street, pulled us back into his store (we were trying to be polite) and trailed us again as I tried to wriggle free. The visit cost me 20 Euro for a glass clock, but I like it, and it's prettier than anything I'd seen or would see on Venice. (It lives on my beading table now so that I can keep track of the time when I get heavy into a project and leave Jack waiting for lights-out for an hour past bedtime.)
We took the vaporetto to a different part of Venice, to see the Ghetto, where people had built dwellings so compact they'd sometimes take up half the height of a normal apartment, stacked on top of each other, a model for tenaments worldwide that came to be known as ghettos (small "g") themselves.
On our way in a friendly little black cat played with us. Jack found a piece of plastic ribbon and I got out my camera.
After we walked away the kitty posed in a doorway for us.
A glass shop in the Ghetto specialized in Judaica. In the window was a blown glass chess set:
As we waited for a vaporetto to take us back to Saint Mark's square (our hotel was nearby), the sun was setting:
The boat took us past the Rialto Bridge, one of only a few that cross the Grand Canal.
At night (well past 8 again) as we waited for a table at a restaurant, I took some pictures of a feeder canal.
In reality it was much darker out than this, but the camera decided to make some corrections. The result is an eerie doorway glow and a haunting plaster face on the left side wall.
My throat felt scratchy at dinner. I thought it might be allergies but it didn't get any better. By the next morning I knew I was sick.We went to Saint Mark's Square, which looked like it had just finished draining from a high tide. The line for the cathedral was huge. We went next door to the Doge's Palace instead. The square has a handful of museums, and you can spend a healthy sum to buy an all-encompassing ticket. Jack thought it over and we decided it wasn't worth it. We bought cheaper ones that let us into a few places but not Saint Mark's. Oh well. We went into the palace, the library museum, and the Correr museum instead. More Medieval art, Madonnas, and baby Jesuses, plus some manuscripts from the Venetian architect Palladio. My nose was running and I was pretty sure I had a small fever. This was going to put a dent in my plan to ride a century two days from now.
We got across the canal by bridge to the Peggy Guggenheim museum, full of modern art. Finally, pictures that made no sense at all. For a while we sat outside at the front of the museum, on the Grand Canal, watching boats and gondolas go by. There was a multi-man-powered gondola race, too, with a dozen colored boats and men screaming as they sped past.
Then we started thinking about the Buskin and Batteau song, "Death in Venice." We could only remember some of the words. But, lucky for you, because neither the lyrics nor the song are online, we have an old LP (gasp!) with printed lyrics.
Some words of warning first, though: It helps if you've read Death in Venice, but it's not necessary; and there are some really bad puns in here.
Poor Gus, never saw the Eiffel Tower
Poor Gus, never saw the London Bridge
Poor Gus, cut down in his finest flower
Getting stiffer by the hour
Stuffed inside the hotel fridge
'Cause
Death in Venice
He just ran out of breath in Venice
And now they're gonna pole
An old gondola draped in black
He came to Venice wan and sickly
But who could tell that he'd pass in Itly
The natives thought it was grotesque, oh,
An al fresco cardiac
When Sal and Guido
Dragged him off across the Lido
He was dead meat, oh
No treat, oh
Nohow
He'd been a great musician
Who finally learned decomposition
No need to requisition
A physician
Not now
Deceased in Venice
Not even time to call a priest in Venice
That's some vacation, he just coughed
And shuffled off without a prayer
His escapade erratic
Raised eyebrows up and and down the Adriatic
And if he weren't null and void
He'd have destroyed his welcome there
His secret passion
Was un poco out of fashion
He had a lot of weird irrational
Trash on his mind
The boy was under twenty
Young and pretty, and al dente
A boy with plenty
To drive a Venetian blind
(Drive a Venetian blind?
Sure. He was too young to rent a car.)
So death in Venice
And now they're cleaning up the meth in Venith
They've even called in Al from Parma
The embalmer
And a pal
And if anyone can make him look
Decent for burial
It's Al
Al can make him look sensational
Al can make him look terriffic
Al can make him come out Grand
Can Al
(Music by David Buskin; Words by David Buskin and Abra Bigham; copyright 1984, Poso Music)
We wandered back across the bridge to yet another museum, where we saw a modern glass exhibit. There was some interesting work; the dead pigeons caught my attention. But I wasn't the only one fixated on the chandeliers that hung above the exhibit, not part of it, but better.
For Chris in Boston, here's some neon art:
In a fevery snot-daze I shuffled back to the hotel, but I wanted to stop first in a store we'd passed earlier in the day. Everything in it was fifty percent off; I might have a shot at snagging some cheaper beads in a necklace. The place was mobbed with tourists. I had plenty of time to finger a dozen necklaces and choose the best ones for destruction while I was standing in line. Then the credit card connection broke and all sales became cash-only. I had to put back half of what I was holding, but I'm glad I did. And for the 45 minutes I was in there scrutinizing necklaces I completely forgot about my fever. I came away with some reasonably good stuff at less than one Euro per bead.We went back to the hotel, picked up our bags, took a vaporetto to the train station, and boarded a bus for the airport. As we neared the airport, about twenty minutes into the ride, Jack saw our hotel, so we jumped off the bus and dragged our bags half a mile back to the hotel. That saved us some cab fare since we were low on cash anyway.
Our flight was for 7 a.m. the next morning, which meant getting to the airport by 5:30. Jack was figuring we'd just have to deal with not getting enough sleep, but I was conked out by 9:30. I awoke in the wee hours with an excruciating headache. I stumbled into the bathroom, found my naproxen, downed it, and fell back into bed. Within minutes the headache was gone. I felt the fever break. When we got up a few hours later I felt fine. We boarded the plane for London.
Cranbury
1 November
I can't remember the last time I went on a ride out of Cranbury. I think I went once this year. I used to go nearly every week, but I got burned out on it and sick of the Clarksburg Deli. Cheryl re-named it Le Chateau. Chris embellished it to Le Chateau de Ptomaine.
The Clarksburg Inn, around the corner, burnt down recently. If it was arson they hit the wrong place. On the other hand, if the deli were to burn it'd become a Superfund site. Probably should be already.
Nowadays if I show up when Larry is leading he makes a point not to stop at the Clarksburg Deli. Today, knowing in advance I'd be on the ride, Larry did us one better by taking us on a three-mile detour so that we wouldn't even have to look at the place.
Poor Larry. He was looking for fall color and found nothing of interest. So when we passed the horse farm on our way back from Hornerstown I stopped for pictures at the top of the hill.
He was at the bottom framing more.
It was one of those days that starts out cloudy, stays cloudy, gets windier, and never really warms up. We were almost home when we passed a swale full of duckweed and cattails. Larry said, "You should put Kermit in there and take a picture."
"Only if he's holding a banjo and singing 'The Rainbow Connection.' In a swamp."
"How does that song go?"
I sang the first verse, which isn't easy in any case, so imagine trying to blurt it out while pushing against a headwind. "That's all I can remember."
When we got back to the car I looked it up on my phone and showed him the lyrics. I was going to paste them in here, but why do that when we can get Kermit himself.
So, without further ado, Kermit the Frog,from the opening scene of the Muppet Movie:
Europe 2009 Part 4: Florence
26-28 September
I forgot to mention something about Turin: hazelnuts. That's Turin's big crop. Nutella started there. We ate hazelnut gelato and bought hazelnut chocolate to eat back in the States. On our last night in Turin I asked Jack, "If you could sum up Turin in one word what would it be?" He said it couldn't be done but I said, "Hazelnut." I decided, after some deliberation, that Paris' word is "treeless."
Also, Jack pointed out that I've put the Palazzo Vecchio in Turin. It's in Florence. Duh. The museum we saw in Turin was the Egyptian museum, which took us some wandering about to find. As Jack noted at the time, Turin hides its museums well.
OK, so without further ado, onto Florence, where the Palazzo Vecchio really is. With souvenir stalls outside selling miniature replicas of Michelangelo's David. And Pinocchio puppets. Lots of them. And more gelato.
We wheeled our bags down narrow, cobblestone streets to Antonia House, where we were greeted by Antonia, who spoke no English. Much gesturing and many one-word sentences later, during which we found out there was a house cat around, we dropped our stuff off in our room and went in search of lunch.
First I bought a cheap pair of sunglasses. The glare in the city was intense. We were staying about half a mile away from Il Duomo. The plaza around it was teeming with crowds. Among the people wandered a woman dressed as a nun, in white, with her face painted white. She blew kisses, said, "Psssss, pssss!" and held out a tray. Somehow she was making money doing this.
We didn't climb the tower in Il Duomo. We only saw the inside of the cathedral. Jack had been here before in high school; even then he said the ascent was treacherous. With my unpredictable acrophobia (which seems to have started when my hearing loss did, and which seems to be triggered by wind more than heights), and because there was an admission fee, we decided to skip it.
Continuing with our collection of strange English translations, we found this on a wall:
This picture was taken on our first night in Florence. It's pretty typical of the streets in the old part of the city.
Traffic was mostly of the pedestrian and scooter variety, but occasionally a car would manage to squeeze through. One evening I saw a near-collision between a bicycle commuter (with no light) and a motor scooter (also with no light) as they both stopped abruptly, missing each other by a few feet at a corner.
Florence was full of shoe stores and handbag stores. Street carts sold scarves and more handbags. Yawn. An occasional storefront displayed Venetian glass, but we'd be in Venice in a few days anyway. Jack bought some wine. I searched for coffee beans but wound up only with gourmet, vacuum-packed, espresso-strength grounds. (The idea was to try Italian espresso blend coffee in my French press. I drank some a few days after I got back from the trip, about half an hour before giving a presentation at work. Let's just say this: I don't think I'll ever need to try crack.)
We did laundry in the afternoon, using all available hangers and space to dry half a week's worth of clothes. Fortunately there was a fan in the room and the humidity was low. Still, I hoped Antonia wouldn't make any surprise visits until everything dried and was put away.
That night I finally got a chance to make some jewelry. I pulled out beads by Kristina Logan that I bought nearly a year ago. While I made a bracelet, a necklace, and a pair of earrings, I got bitten on my legs a dozen times by mosquitoes. I also thought a lot about my job and how it seemed to be taking over my life. I'd already dreamed about work three times since arriving in London. But as I finished the necklace and put cortisone on my bites, I must have come to a resolution, because I didn't dream about work again for the rest of the trip.
The next morning Antonia brought breakfast to the room (most of the clothes had dried). She saw the beads on the table and the bracelet I was wearing. "Bella! Bella!" What I'd charge for this bracelet would have paid for the room for all three nights. But this one was going to be a keeper. I'd have to make another to sell.
We set off to take a look inside Il Duomo. This door is one of two entrances to an opera house across the plaza:
Here's Il Duomo. Click on the pictures for enlarged views.
Is the screen on the tower to catch jumpers or crap that tourists throw out the windows? Or both?
Here's one of the entrances to the cathedral:
We passed a store that sold lampwork glass beaded jewelry. Phhhhhbbt! Kristina Logan does it better.
The line at the Uffizzi gallery took us an hour to get through. I noticed something again that I'd seen a few times in the past several days: older men, probably in their fifties, with women who looked to be barely out of their teens. My first assumption was, of course, father-daughter. But that was pretty quickly disposed of when I saw the body language. Whatever.
Here are some views of Florence from the gallery windows:
Here's an alleyway somewhere in Florence. Jack liked it so I took its picture.
Both of these towers were leaning a bit:
This is Il Duomo again, taken later in the day when we were on our way back to the hotel:
Hmm... I just looked at my notes. Remember that fancy dinner where we watched the moon? That was in Florence, not Turin. I seem to be giving Turin a lot of undue credit. Anyway, on with the story.
Our room was above an outdoor restaurant. Voices echoed and amplified up the stone walls. While we enjoyed the fresh air, we decided that the noise and mosquitoes were too annoying. We closed the windows.
This is the view from our hotel room the next morning:
Here's the half-completed second Kristina Logan bracelet. Antonia came in while I was working on it. "Bella! Bella!" I decided I should make something for her and her eight-ish year old daughter, and later I did, out of art glass by Patti Cahill (Dyed in the Fire, no website).
Our plan for the day was to find the Boboli Gardens across the Arno River. We crossed the Ponte Vecchio, the Old Bridge, famous for its buildings along the span. It was so full of tourists and tourist shops that I didn't even try to get a picture. So here's one from Google Images instead, taken from the river, which is better anyway, and here's another, of the tackiness. But hey, here's a really good one. (Thanks to Larry, by the way, for reminding me about the bridge. I'd forgotten all about it until he asked me today if we'd seen it.)
I took pictures of the river from the bridge.
When we finally found the garden we couldn't get in. Silly us. It was the last whatever day it was (we'd sort of lost track at this point; my notes say Wednesday but the photo date says Monday) of the month. The place was closed. So was the museum across the street from where we had lunch back on the city side of the Arno.
We decided instead to climb up the hills on the other side of the river to see the basilica there.
Here's a tower with a strange set of staircases that we saw on our way up:
Here's the view from the tourist-filled plateau. I focused in on Il Duomo.
There was some more climbing from there to reach the Basilica San Mineato al Monte. Here's the view. I focused in on the city wall.
From inside the basilica:
The graveyard:
We walked along sloping parapets among the mausoleums.
I said, "Why do I suddenly feel like a monk in an M.C. Escher print?" He must have been here.
A very green tree:
A Dr. Seuss tree:
A kitty in the graveyard let me take a picture.
At San Mineato the monks sing Gregorian chants at Vespers, at 5:30 every night. We had about an hour to kill, so we went back down the hill to the first plateau, where a bar sold lemon granitas (think Slurpee but without so much sugar). Perfect. We climbed back up and went into the oldest part of the church, built in the 11th century, down some stairs, in the back, dark, and damp.
The alter was behind a wrought-iron gate. The few rows of pews were full by 5:30. The monks filed in and took their seats behind the grate. Their chants echoed in the chamber. Halfway into the service a man behind me stood up and started singing along. We stuck around until it was obvious that communion was about to happen. This was a good time for us to leave. For atheists like me it's all spectacle.
Outside the sun was going down behind the trees.
We descended the hill a different way, coming upon a street that had to be at least a twenty percent grade. And no, I would not like to try climbing this on my bike.
Here's the city wall:
We eventually did meet the Antonia House pussycat, Tomy, who was a big, fluffy tabby fond of munching the dried grass in the hallway vase.
Our second night in the city we decided to try the restaurant under our room. As we were eating we watched the handbag-and-scarf vendors wheel their massive carts, by hand, down the street to a storage area out of our sight. One after another they rumbled past, assisted by small motors that made pulling the carts easier.
Our guide book mentioned where to find the best gelato in the city, so off we went to try it. The book was right. On our way home we passed by the hotel we were supposed to have stayed in. Under it was an outdoor restaurant, housing a crowd of drunken Brits. We could hear them singing all the way to our hotel. Not to stereotype or anything, but if happy Italians are loud, drunken Brits are louder, especially in the narrow, echoing streets of Florence.
We left for Venice the next morning.
I forgot to mention something about Turin: hazelnuts. That's Turin's big crop. Nutella started there. We ate hazelnut gelato and bought hazelnut chocolate to eat back in the States. On our last night in Turin I asked Jack, "If you could sum up Turin in one word what would it be?" He said it couldn't be done but I said, "Hazelnut." I decided, after some deliberation, that Paris' word is "treeless."
Also, Jack pointed out that I've put the Palazzo Vecchio in Turin. It's in Florence. Duh. The museum we saw in Turin was the Egyptian museum, which took us some wandering about to find. As Jack noted at the time, Turin hides its museums well.
OK, so without further ado, onto Florence, where the Palazzo Vecchio really is. With souvenir stalls outside selling miniature replicas of Michelangelo's David. And Pinocchio puppets. Lots of them. And more gelato.
We wheeled our bags down narrow, cobblestone streets to Antonia House, where we were greeted by Antonia, who spoke no English. Much gesturing and many one-word sentences later, during which we found out there was a house cat around, we dropped our stuff off in our room and went in search of lunch.
First I bought a cheap pair of sunglasses. The glare in the city was intense. We were staying about half a mile away from Il Duomo. The plaza around it was teeming with crowds. Among the people wandered a woman dressed as a nun, in white, with her face painted white. She blew kisses, said, "Psssss, pssss!" and held out a tray. Somehow she was making money doing this.
We didn't climb the tower in Il Duomo. We only saw the inside of the cathedral. Jack had been here before in high school; even then he said the ascent was treacherous. With my unpredictable acrophobia (which seems to have started when my hearing loss did, and which seems to be triggered by wind more than heights), and because there was an admission fee, we decided to skip it.
Continuing with our collection of strange English translations, we found this on a wall:
This picture was taken on our first night in Florence. It's pretty typical of the streets in the old part of the city.
Traffic was mostly of the pedestrian and scooter variety, but occasionally a car would manage to squeeze through. One evening I saw a near-collision between a bicycle commuter (with no light) and a motor scooter (also with no light) as they both stopped abruptly, missing each other by a few feet at a corner.Florence was full of shoe stores and handbag stores. Street carts sold scarves and more handbags. Yawn. An occasional storefront displayed Venetian glass, but we'd be in Venice in a few days anyway. Jack bought some wine. I searched for coffee beans but wound up only with gourmet, vacuum-packed, espresso-strength grounds. (The idea was to try Italian espresso blend coffee in my French press. I drank some a few days after I got back from the trip, about half an hour before giving a presentation at work. Let's just say this: I don't think I'll ever need to try crack.)
We did laundry in the afternoon, using all available hangers and space to dry half a week's worth of clothes. Fortunately there was a fan in the room and the humidity was low. Still, I hoped Antonia wouldn't make any surprise visits until everything dried and was put away.
That night I finally got a chance to make some jewelry. I pulled out beads by Kristina Logan that I bought nearly a year ago. While I made a bracelet, a necklace, and a pair of earrings, I got bitten on my legs a dozen times by mosquitoes. I also thought a lot about my job and how it seemed to be taking over my life. I'd already dreamed about work three times since arriving in London. But as I finished the necklace and put cortisone on my bites, I must have come to a resolution, because I didn't dream about work again for the rest of the trip.
The next morning Antonia brought breakfast to the room (most of the clothes had dried). She saw the beads on the table and the bracelet I was wearing. "Bella! Bella!" What I'd charge for this bracelet would have paid for the room for all three nights. But this one was going to be a keeper. I'd have to make another to sell.
We set off to take a look inside Il Duomo. This door is one of two entrances to an opera house across the plaza:
Here's Il Duomo. Click on the pictures for enlarged views.
Is the screen on the tower to catch jumpers or crap that tourists throw out the windows? Or both?
Here's one of the entrances to the cathedral:
We passed a store that sold lampwork glass beaded jewelry. Phhhhhbbt! Kristina Logan does it better.
The line at the Uffizzi gallery took us an hour to get through. I noticed something again that I'd seen a few times in the past several days: older men, probably in their fifties, with women who looked to be barely out of their teens. My first assumption was, of course, father-daughter. But that was pretty quickly disposed of when I saw the body language. Whatever.Here are some views of Florence from the gallery windows:
Here's an alleyway somewhere in Florence. Jack liked it so I took its picture.
Both of these towers were leaning a bit:
This is Il Duomo again, taken later in the day when we were on our way back to the hotel:
Hmm... I just looked at my notes. Remember that fancy dinner where we watched the moon? That was in Florence, not Turin. I seem to be giving Turin a lot of undue credit. Anyway, on with the story.
Our room was above an outdoor restaurant. Voices echoed and amplified up the stone walls. While we enjoyed the fresh air, we decided that the noise and mosquitoes were too annoying. We closed the windows.
This is the view from our hotel room the next morning:
Here's the half-completed second Kristina Logan bracelet. Antonia came in while I was working on it. "Bella! Bella!" I decided I should make something for her and her eight-ish year old daughter, and later I did, out of art glass by Patti Cahill (Dyed in the Fire, no website).
Our plan for the day was to find the Boboli Gardens across the Arno River. We crossed the Ponte Vecchio, the Old Bridge, famous for its buildings along the span. It was so full of tourists and tourist shops that I didn't even try to get a picture. So here's one from Google Images instead, taken from the river, which is better anyway, and here's another, of the tackiness. But hey, here's a really good one. (Thanks to Larry, by the way, for reminding me about the bridge. I'd forgotten all about it until he asked me today if we'd seen it.)I took pictures of the river from the bridge.
When we finally found the garden we couldn't get in. Silly us. It was the last whatever day it was (we'd sort of lost track at this point; my notes say Wednesday but the photo date says Monday) of the month. The place was closed. So was the museum across the street from where we had lunch back on the city side of the Arno.We decided instead to climb up the hills on the other side of the river to see the basilica there.
Here's a tower with a strange set of staircases that we saw on our way up:
Here's the view from the tourist-filled plateau. I focused in on Il Duomo.There was some more climbing from there to reach the Basilica San Mineato al Monte. Here's the view. I focused in on the city wall.
From inside the basilica:
The graveyard:
We walked along sloping parapets among the mausoleums.
I said, "Why do I suddenly feel like a monk in an M.C. Escher print?" He must have been here.
A very green tree:
A Dr. Seuss tree:
A kitty in the graveyard let me take a picture.
At San Mineato the monks sing Gregorian chants at Vespers, at 5:30 every night. We had about an hour to kill, so we went back down the hill to the first plateau, where a bar sold lemon granitas (think Slurpee but without so much sugar). Perfect. We climbed back up and went into the oldest part of the church, built in the 11th century, down some stairs, in the back, dark, and damp.The alter was behind a wrought-iron gate. The few rows of pews were full by 5:30. The monks filed in and took their seats behind the grate. Their chants echoed in the chamber. Halfway into the service a man behind me stood up and started singing along. We stuck around until it was obvious that communion was about to happen. This was a good time for us to leave. For atheists like me it's all spectacle.
Outside the sun was going down behind the trees.
We descended the hill a different way, coming upon a street that had to be at least a twenty percent grade. And no, I would not like to try climbing this on my bike.
Here's the city wall:
We eventually did meet the Antonia House pussycat, Tomy, who was a big, fluffy tabby fond of munching the dried grass in the hallway vase.Our second night in the city we decided to try the restaurant under our room. As we were eating we watched the handbag-and-scarf vendors wheel their massive carts, by hand, down the street to a storage area out of our sight. One after another they rumbled past, assisted by small motors that made pulling the carts easier.
Our guide book mentioned where to find the best gelato in the city, so off we went to try it. The book was right. On our way home we passed by the hotel we were supposed to have stayed in. Under it was an outdoor restaurant, housing a crowd of drunken Brits. We could hear them singing all the way to our hotel. Not to stereotype or anything, but if happy Italians are loud, drunken Brits are louder, especially in the narrow, echoing streets of Florence.
We left for Venice the next morning.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Halloween
31 OctoberThere wasn't supposed to be rain today, and for the most part there wasn't, but most of the time we were cycling through a mild mist. Phyllis said it was perfect weather for Halloween.
We thought we'd try to meet up with Ken's ride in Princeton but, on Carter Road, when we had only ten minutes to get all the way to Mountain Lakes, we bagged that idea. The roads were wet anyway; his ride was probably canceled. So we returned to the original plan: to see decorated yards in Lambertville.
Big Joe and I traded off leading, making the route up as we went along, trying to find a route that would avoid traffic, puddles, and piles of wet leaves.
We were rather damp and covered with road splut when we reached Lambertville, but on Union Street a few blocks south of Rojo's we got our reward. Joe and Phyllis rode on ahead while Mighty Mike and Mike B. stayed with me while I shot this video:
The "clunk" you hear early on is an acorn hitting the car next to me. I think that's Mighty Mike doing the sound effects at the end but I'm not sure. They were standing behind me.
Poor Kermit. I'd just put him through the wash and gave him his annual ghost costume. Now he was filthy again.
Mighty Mike had a flat at Rojo's, which gave me enough time to buy a bag of coffee. East Timor this time; it's only available for a few months of the year.We didn't get very far before Mike's tire was flat again. This time the Mikes pulled out three separate, tiny, pieces of glass, or something.
We rode in and out of rain the rest of the way home. It was the Mikes who pointed out the autumn colors along the Stony Brook.
That's as good as it's going to get around here. Half the leaves are off the trees already, and with the wind the way it is, there won't be much left on the rest of them by tomorrow.Don't forget to set your clocks back tonight.
Up next: Florence, Italy.
Europe 2009 Part 3: Turin
24-26 September
The train station in Turin was full of graffiti. We hauled our bags up and down stairs before we finally found a way out that got us to the other side of the tracks. By the time we checked into our room it was nearly two o'clock.
This wouldn't have mattered in London or Paris but it mattered here. Most shops and restaurants close around 1 or 2 p.m. and don't re-open for a few hours. The clerk at the hotel desk, who spoke as much English as Jack speaks Italian (i.e. not a whole lot but he can fake it) told us, in Italinglish, where to find an open cafe nearby.
So we walked around the corner and found one. The menu was on a chalk board out on the sidewalk. It was confusing because it was one of those choose-one-from-each-section menus, but we didn't understand that part. It took two waitresses, in tag-team fashion, to help us through it, Jack speaking what little Italian he knew while I just sort of smiled a lot.
Along with some pasta I'd ordered a plate of spinach. Before cooking it the waitress showed it to me. I thought she was just checking to see if that's what I wanted. What she was really saying was, "I'm going to cook this whole mountain of spinach so I hope you'll still have room to eat it." Which I didn't. Jack did his best to help so as not to make these overly pleasant staff unhappy.
The waitress and barista seemed enchanted with us. They didn't get too many travelers. Along with our food they gave us an Italian lesson. We asked them how to order tap water, and they told us.
I ordered espresso. Now, as you know, I like my coffee strong. The darker the roast, the better. However. "This tastes like the bottom of my French press," I told Jack. I mean, there comes a point where the strength overpowers the flavor, where anything interesting about the bean is shoved aside by the taste of burnt something. Now it makes sense why espresso is doled out by the drop. Anything more would be impossible.
I added half a pack of sugar, which would have been more than enough for an American sized cup. Here, in five or six milliliters of espresso, the sugar turned to syrup. I drank it anyway, vowing to try again some other time.
I took a picture of our lessons learned.
Aside from two workmen drinking espresso at the counter we were the only people in the place. We left them a thank-you note in the best Italian Jack could muster. It helps that he knows Latin. It doesn't help that I know French. I kept trying to Italicize French words. That didn't work very well because the words came out in Spanish, a language I thought I'd forgotten. Or maybe I was just speaking some sort of Latinate gibberish. Despite that I sometimes made myself understood, as long as Jack and I were trading off words.
We were in good company, though. The Torinese were fascinated by English, with some amusing results. First, this gambling shop across the street from the cafe:
Then this store closer to the center of town:
In the pedestrian shopping district I found this:
Original, preppy, undercover marines maybe? If so they're sure recruiting young these days.
The hotel rules posted on the door were another source of amusement.
"1. If a fire principle is characterized, set in action the alarm push button nearly
2. Maintain the calm;
3. To it marks them of the alarm, leave the place;"
and so on. They did get "Don't use elevators" right.
"10. If some person found itself with the dresses sets fire to you, and for no reason she never must run because the air would feed the fire. In these cases try to suffocate flames covering them with one covered or of the dressed:"
Sure. Whatever you say.
The next day we set out to explore. We went to the Palazzo Vecchio, about which I already blogged. I only have so much patience for Medieval and Renaissance art as it is, but by the time we finished with the palace I'd seen quite enough Madonnas, naked angels, and Jesus penises. And don't get me started on the number of dresses that just happen to fall off of one shoulder for some gratuitous boob.
I had as much trouble finding vegetarian food in Turin as I did in Paris; the cooking in Turin is very French-influenced. Jack scoped out some Piedmont wine.
Jack wanted a fancy dinner so we found a place, outdoors in a piazza. I don't even remember what I ate, but Jack had a fabulous time. There was cheese with honey and a risotto made with berries and champagne (yummy). The bread was good, too, which, we found out later, would be an exception until Venice. We watched the moon sink behind a church at the other end of the piazza and then went wandering in search of gelato.
On our second day we wandered into a street market that went on for blocks, turned right, and went on for an even longer stretch. When we saw a dried fruit stand I got greedy and wound up with a kilo of dried everything. Strawberries, cranberries, mango, kiwi, pineapple, peaches, pears, far more Euros than I'd intended to spend. The supply ended up lasting us about six days; we ate it for breakfast and whenever we got the munchies.
Since we were hauling a kilo of fruit around anyway, we decided to find some cheese and bread, and then find somewhere along the hillside to eat it all.
We found a German vendor selling pretzel bread, the real thing.
These pictures don't capture the size of the market.
We crossed the river Po. Hooray, another picture of a river by Perpetualheadwinds. At least it's not the Raritan this time.
Our plan was to climb the hill outside the city for a good view. First we found a bench near the bottom where we could eat lunch. I made a fair dent in the fruit kilo and snarfed down most of the pretzel. I said I wanted to go back and get another one on the way home. Jack figured the market would be closed by now.
Anyway, the view:
As best we could figure, we were looking at a small vineyard:
After we got back to the bottom I took a picture of where we'd been. The building was a museum that we decided wasn't worth going into. I did get to go in to use the bathroom. Looking around I determined we'd made the right choice.
Back on the city side of the Po we sat on the grass in a park and watched rowers go by.
Then we walked back home, through the street market again. Even though it was close to 6 p.m. much of it was still going. The pretzel lady was still there so I got another one. The fruit guy had re-stocked. Some vendors had set out generators to power lights over their stalls.
We dropped our stuff in the hotel and went out again in search of dinner. Passing the market again at nearly 8 p.m. we saw a dozen or so vendors still sticking it out.
Turin hosted the Olympics in 2006. Three years on it was obvious that the city was sliding back into what it had been before the big cleanup. There was graffiti everywhere, not much of it interesting. I like graffiti when it's colorful and creative. There's some really good work along the Northeast Corridor train tracks just outside of North Philadelphia that I gawk at on the way into work. Nothing in Turin comes close to that.
We checked our email twice at internet cafes. It was a good thing we'd checked a second time: our hotel reservation in Florence had been canceled. Shortly after making our reservations a month ago our credit card number was stolen and the card frozen (to Bank of America's credit, they found the fraud before we did). We got new cards within days but the Florence hotel tried to run our old number. Jack spent a dramatic half hour on the phone. The hotel had already given away our room but were kind enough to find us a spot in a hotel around the corner, run by a woman who spoke no English.
We had gelato again after dinner.
The next morning I stuffed the dried fruit into my backpack and boarded the train for Florence. The scenery wasn't as good.
The train station in Turin was full of graffiti. We hauled our bags up and down stairs before we finally found a way out that got us to the other side of the tracks. By the time we checked into our room it was nearly two o'clock.
This wouldn't have mattered in London or Paris but it mattered here. Most shops and restaurants close around 1 or 2 p.m. and don't re-open for a few hours. The clerk at the hotel desk, who spoke as much English as Jack speaks Italian (i.e. not a whole lot but he can fake it) told us, in Italinglish, where to find an open cafe nearby.
So we walked around the corner and found one. The menu was on a chalk board out on the sidewalk. It was confusing because it was one of those choose-one-from-each-section menus, but we didn't understand that part. It took two waitresses, in tag-team fashion, to help us through it, Jack speaking what little Italian he knew while I just sort of smiled a lot.
Along with some pasta I'd ordered a plate of spinach. Before cooking it the waitress showed it to me. I thought she was just checking to see if that's what I wanted. What she was really saying was, "I'm going to cook this whole mountain of spinach so I hope you'll still have room to eat it." Which I didn't. Jack did his best to help so as not to make these overly pleasant staff unhappy.
The waitress and barista seemed enchanted with us. They didn't get too many travelers. Along with our food they gave us an Italian lesson. We asked them how to order tap water, and they told us.
I ordered espresso. Now, as you know, I like my coffee strong. The darker the roast, the better. However. "This tastes like the bottom of my French press," I told Jack. I mean, there comes a point where the strength overpowers the flavor, where anything interesting about the bean is shoved aside by the taste of burnt something. Now it makes sense why espresso is doled out by the drop. Anything more would be impossible.
I added half a pack of sugar, which would have been more than enough for an American sized cup. Here, in five or six milliliters of espresso, the sugar turned to syrup. I drank it anyway, vowing to try again some other time.
I took a picture of our lessons learned.
Aside from two workmen drinking espresso at the counter we were the only people in the place. We left them a thank-you note in the best Italian Jack could muster. It helps that he knows Latin. It doesn't help that I know French. I kept trying to Italicize French words. That didn't work very well because the words came out in Spanish, a language I thought I'd forgotten. Or maybe I was just speaking some sort of Latinate gibberish. Despite that I sometimes made myself understood, as long as Jack and I were trading off words.
We were in good company, though. The Torinese were fascinated by English, with some amusing results. First, this gambling shop across the street from the cafe:
Then this store closer to the center of town:
In the pedestrian shopping district I found this:
Original, preppy, undercover marines maybe? If so they're sure recruiting young these days.The hotel rules posted on the door were another source of amusement.
"1. If a fire principle is characterized, set in action the alarm push button nearly2. Maintain the calm;
3. To it marks them of the alarm, leave the place;"
and so on. They did get "Don't use elevators" right.
"10. If some person found itself with the dresses sets fire to you, and for no reason she never must run because the air would feed the fire. In these cases try to suffocate flames covering them with one covered or of the dressed:"
Sure. Whatever you say.
The next day we set out to explore. We went to the Palazzo Vecchio, about which I already blogged. I only have so much patience for Medieval and Renaissance art as it is, but by the time we finished with the palace I'd seen quite enough Madonnas, naked angels, and Jesus penises. And don't get me started on the number of dresses that just happen to fall off of one shoulder for some gratuitous boob.
I had as much trouble finding vegetarian food in Turin as I did in Paris; the cooking in Turin is very French-influenced. Jack scoped out some Piedmont wine.
Jack wanted a fancy dinner so we found a place, outdoors in a piazza. I don't even remember what I ate, but Jack had a fabulous time. There was cheese with honey and a risotto made with berries and champagne (yummy). The bread was good, too, which, we found out later, would be an exception until Venice. We watched the moon sink behind a church at the other end of the piazza and then went wandering in search of gelato.
On our second day we wandered into a street market that went on for blocks, turned right, and went on for an even longer stretch. When we saw a dried fruit stand I got greedy and wound up with a kilo of dried everything. Strawberries, cranberries, mango, kiwi, pineapple, peaches, pears, far more Euros than I'd intended to spend. The supply ended up lasting us about six days; we ate it for breakfast and whenever we got the munchies.
Since we were hauling a kilo of fruit around anyway, we decided to find some cheese and bread, and then find somewhere along the hillside to eat it all.
We found a German vendor selling pretzel bread, the real thing.
These pictures don't capture the size of the market.
We crossed the river Po. Hooray, another picture of a river by Perpetualheadwinds. At least it's not the Raritan this time.
Our plan was to climb the hill outside the city for a good view. First we found a bench near the bottom where we could eat lunch. I made a fair dent in the fruit kilo and snarfed down most of the pretzel. I said I wanted to go back and get another one on the way home. Jack figured the market would be closed by now.Anyway, the view:
As best we could figure, we were looking at a small vineyard:
After we got back to the bottom I took a picture of where we'd been. The building was a museum that we decided wasn't worth going into. I did get to go in to use the bathroom. Looking around I determined we'd made the right choice.
Back on the city side of the Po we sat on the grass in a park and watched rowers go by.
Then we walked back home, through the street market again. Even though it was close to 6 p.m. much of it was still going. The pretzel lady was still there so I got another one. The fruit guy had re-stocked. Some vendors had set out generators to power lights over their stalls.We dropped our stuff in the hotel and went out again in search of dinner. Passing the market again at nearly 8 p.m. we saw a dozen or so vendors still sticking it out.
Turin hosted the Olympics in 2006. Three years on it was obvious that the city was sliding back into what it had been before the big cleanup. There was graffiti everywhere, not much of it interesting. I like graffiti when it's colorful and creative. There's some really good work along the Northeast Corridor train tracks just outside of North Philadelphia that I gawk at on the way into work. Nothing in Turin comes close to that.
We checked our email twice at internet cafes. It was a good thing we'd checked a second time: our hotel reservation in Florence had been canceled. Shortly after making our reservations a month ago our credit card number was stolen and the card frozen (to Bank of America's credit, they found the fraud before we did). We got new cards within days but the Florence hotel tried to run our old number. Jack spent a dramatic half hour on the phone. The hotel had already given away our room but were kind enough to find us a spot in a hotel around the corner, run by a woman who spoke no English.
We had gelato again after dinner.
The next morning I stuffed the dried fruit into my backpack and boarded the train for Florence. The scenery wasn't as good.
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